‘Have fun,’ Gordon said to Lou’s broad back as she pushed out through the saloon door. At the top of the staircase, she removed the wobbly newel and placed it by the laundry chute where Gordon could not forget it.

Dog nodded at the envelope. ‘What’s that, champ?’

‘Nothing,’ Gordon said, slipping the money into his pocket before going into the bunk room to add Lou’s clothes to the load of washing he intended to put on, the last Task waiting to be crossed off. He carried the clothes to the top-loader on a platform outside the back door of the kitchen, filled the tub and switched it on. The second-hand washing machine had no fixed running time, making up its own mind whether to take one hour or three. You knew it was nearly finished when it entered its spin cycle and wobbled violently enough to shake the walls.

Handling Lou’s clothes, Gordon swallowed back a fur ball of emotion he didn’t want to cough up in front of the others. He’d had little to do with Lou through her childhood. Twenty-two years ago, after naming him godfather to their only daughter, a role Gordon intended to take as seriously as he took his stewardship of all anachronisms, his friends Dave and Sue had moved interstate. Each birthday, Gordon sent Lou a gift and a card with a thought-through message about ‘life’. ‘It’s the one birthday you never forget,’ Kelly pointed out caustically after he forgot one of hers. ‘A girl you never see, your omigod-daughter when you’re not even a Christian, and yet you have her birthday in your diary and not your wife’s. Not to mention your mother’s, which is coming up very soon and I bet you haven’t bought anything, and no, I’m not doing your shopping for you. But Lou? You’ve never met her, but you never forget her. Shows your priorities.’

Gordon had taken that to heart, where diverse colonies of guilt were accumulating like plaque. He did care for his goddaughter; he was just waiting for a chance to prove it. And then, five months ago, when his own life was lying in pieces around him, Gordon received devastating news. Dave, at forty-nine, had died of a stroke. Weeks later, a man who had been attempting to ‘console’ Sue was seen driving her into a national park. That afternoon the man was found in his car, alone with an empty card of Endone. Sue was listed as a missing person, but police treated the case as a murder-suicide. Gordon had flown in and, discovering that he was the nearest Lou had to a parent, blurted out an invitation that she had, astonishingly, accepted, despite not knowing Gordon as more than a name on an annual birthday card.